Playboy Retro: Jenilee Harrison

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<p>Jenilee Harrison, of Three's Company and Dallas fame, shocked the world with her 1987 pictorial in Playboy, a far cry from the Cornflakes box she appeared on a decade earlier.</p>

In an issue that featured praise for the
word processor, the most candid and controversial of conversations with Whoopi Goldberg, a scathing satire of the Iran/Contra affair and an essay on America’s
role as a global prophylactic distributor, nothing rang as many bells as
Jenilee Harrison’s half-naked pictorial tucked neatly between the Playmate of the Month (Sandy Greenberg) and an underwater photo shoot titled “Currents,”
claiming to be about men’s swimwear (though we doubt many were paying attention
to what any men in the photos were wearing).

A former L.A. Rams cheerleader and
recurring star on hit TV shows Three’s
Company and Dallas, Harrison’s
shoot certainly raised some eyebrows in an age when the crossover from
mainstream TV to showing some skin in men’s magazines wasn’t what you would
call the norm; her shoot in our pages certainly stood in stark contrast to her
appearance on a 1978 Corn Flakes box, a place that’s always been the embodiment
of traditional family values.

The pictorial, half-naked or not, is hot.
Very hot. Below is the original text that appeared alongside the June 1987
pictures featured in the gallery. Enjoy.

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Her
first boyfriend, a Valley hunk with a weakness for beauty-pageant contestants,
dumped her for Miss Northridge. “I sulked for two months,” says Jenilee
Harrison. “Then I decided he was going to regret it.” Today, somewhere, he
does. Jenilee, determined to outshine Miss Northridge, became a beauty queen
herself, winning titles that ranged from Miss San Fernando Valley to Miss Young
America. Beauty-pageant laurels led to TV commercials and a stint with the
Embraceable Ewes (now more prosaically known as the L.A. Rams cheerleaders).
Next came several seasons as “clumsy Cindy” on the hit sitcom Three’s Company—Jenilee
replaced Suzanne Somers after Somers’ bitter contract dispute with the show’s
producers. Next came a role as a hooker with a golden heart in the James Garner
vehicle Tank. Next came South Fork.
Jenilee’s performance on Dallas as
the smart, tough oil girl Jamie Ewing Barnes made her something of a star. Now
comes Jenilee Harrison, 27, formerly Miss Young America, formerly the most
embraceable Ewe of all, formerly clumsy Cindy and tough Jamie. Currently
successful, sensational, happy—and all on her own terms. When Jenilee sets her
mind to something, something definitely happens.